Richard Whittall:

The Globalist's Top Ten Books in 2016: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Middle East Eye: "

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is one of the weightiest, most revelatory, original and important books written about sport"

“The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer has helped me immensely with great information and perspective.”

Bob Bradley, former US and Egyptian national coach: "James Dorsey’s The Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer (has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture."

Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

Play the Game: "Your expertise is clearly superior when it comes to Middle Eastern soccer."

Andrew Das, The New York Times soccer blog Goal: "No one is better at this kind of work than James Dorsey"

David Zirin, Sports Illustrated: "Essential Reading"

Change FIFA: "A fantastic new blog'

Richard Whitall of A More Splendid Life:

"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

RSIS presents the following commentary The Arab world in turmoil:
Nasser’s legacy reprise by James M. Dorsey and
Mushahid Ali. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward anycomments or
feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg

No. 136/2012 dated 26 July
2012

The Arab world in turmoil:
Nasser’s legacy reprise

By James M. Dorsey and Mushahid Ali

Synopsis

A wave of anti-government protests in the Middle East and North Africa
that is rewriting the region’s political map is sparking a reinterpretation of
recent Arab history that could shape political attitudes of future generations.

Commentary

The rise of Islamist forces in Egypt and other nations in which popular
uprisings have toppled autocratic leaders over the past 18 months constitutes
the Middle East and North Africa’s latest attempt to take control of its own
history. Islamist forces feed on their history of opposition to autocratic rule
and a perception that nationalist, socialist and neo-liberal attempts at
addressing the region’s national, social and economic issues failed.Newly independent Arab states were ruled either
by men who had overthrown leaders who were leftovers of colonialism or claimed
hereditary monarchical rights.

Destroying carefully
constructed myths

The popular revolts, in contrast to past changes of leadership brought about by
military or palace coups or hereditary succession, have created unprecedented
space for free and public debate that is questioning if not demolishing
carefully constructed myths, particularly those surrounding Arab nationalist
leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.A colonel in the
Egyptian army, Nasser’s toppling of the pro-British monarchy in 1952 in the
Arab world’s most populous nation, positioned Egypt at the forefront of the struggle against Israel and
post-colonial economic and social structures and for Arab independence.

Nasser embodied Arab nationalism, the quest for an independent and strong Arab
world and the defence of the rights of the poor, despite being also the father
of the repressive security state. He fortified his position with the 1956
nationalization of the Suez Canal, his leadership of the Non-Aligned movement,
while playing off the United States against the Soviet Union, and his opposition to feudal monarchs in the
Gulf, foremost among whom was the Al-Saud in Saudi Arabia. In doing so, he
changed the region’s political map and influenced the Arab world’s first
post-colonial generation. With Israel the lightning
rod of the new generation of Arab leaders, anti-Israeli policies gave them
political legitimacy, feeding on deep-rooted pro-Palestinian sentiment.

Nasser still embodies Arab nationalism for many who now voice criticism of his
16 years of autocratic rule and record of failed disastrous foreign, economic
and social policies. In fact Nasser’s influence,
considerably diminished by the disastrous six-day war of 1967 in which Arab
militaries, including that of Egypt, were destroyed by Israel in a matter of
days, is still evident 42 years after his death in 1970. In this year’s first
democratic presidential elections a Nasserite candidate garnered a fifth of the
vote. Nonetheless, Nasser’s legacy and that of autocrats who cloaked themselves
in nationalism, is for the first time being openly debated in the media and
political discourse. Fuelling the debate is criticism of 60 years of military
rule in Egypt that started with the coup in which Nasser played a key role.

The debate is sharpened by the loss of appeal of
Nasser’s pan-Arab philosophy in favour of an Arab world that increasingly
perceives itself as a collection of individual states each with their own
interests rather than a region in which common politics, culture and religion
constitute the overriding unifier. In many ways it is the latest phase of
efforts by Arabs to become actors in their own right after having failed to
achieve their aspirations through various imported ideologies.

The future of Nasserism

The late Egyptian intellectual Mohamed Sid Ahmed, wrote 12 years ago: “The
Nasserism of the future…will not entail the resurgence of a specific
ideological platform, policies or a mode of rule. Rather, it will emerge as a
refusal to bend to decisions dictated from abroad by agents inimical to Egypt's
independence.”

Those words were never truer than today in both
post-revolt Arab nations as well as those that have yet to experience political
change but can no longer ignore public opinion. They put the onus on a crop of
new primarily Islamist leaders that are emerging from the upheavals sweeping
the Middle East and North Africa. Foremost among them is Mohammed Morsi, a
leader of Nasser’s nemesis, the Muslim Brotherhood, elected president of Egypt
in June just weeks before the 60th anniversary of Nasser’s coup.

Morsi’s challenge in a nation in which the military’s place as a
modernizing force dates back to the 19th century, is complicated by the
controversy over the role of the military in contemporary Egyptian politics.
The Egyptian military, which last year toppled president Hosni Mubarak with a
mandate to guide the country towards free and fair elections, effectively
pre-empted the Brotherhood’s electoral victory by giving itself broad
legislative and executive authority on the eve of Morsi’s election.

At stake in the ensuing convoluted tug of war between
Morsi and the military is the quest for greater freedom and dignity that
demands a change in the relationship between the state and the military, and
which was the core driver of the popular revolts that have swept the Middle
East and North Africa. Nasser embodied both sides of that divide.

Morsi is a representative of a group that despite operating underground for
much of its 84-year old history, is marked by a quest for accommodation rather
than confrontation. How he manages that divide will determine not only the
ultimate success of the popular revolt that brought him to power but also
perceptions of Nasser’s legacy and future interpretations of contemporary Arab
history.

For its part the military appears bent on retaining that part of Nasser’s
legacy that ascribes legitimacy to its role as protector of the Egyptian nation
and enforcer of the security state, while allowing the Islamist parties to
compete with the secular groups such as the Nasserites, for control of the
civil administration. In reality the new dispensation in Egypt will be a hybrid
militarist-Islamist-secularist reprise of Nasser’s legacy, while the turmoil
continues in the Arab world.

The writers are Senior Fellows at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

Click here for past commentaries.
Find us on Facebook.
Due to the high number of publications by our RSIS Centre for Non-Traditional
Security Studies (NTS), RSIS maintains a separate subscription facility for the
Centre. Please click here to subscribe to the Centre's publications.

World soccer body FIFA has suspended its ousted vice
president, Mohammed Bin Hammam, from involvement in professional soccer for 90 days
in the hope that an independent audit critical of the disgraced Qatari national’s
financial management of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) will allow it to
counter a court verdict that could force it to reinstate him.

FIFA said in a statement that its newly appointed
anti-corruption team, former New York state attorney Michael J. Garcia and
German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, would also use the suspension to assess
prospects of building a more solid case against Mr. Bin Hammam in the wake of
the court verdict.

The Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS)
earlier this month lifted a FIFA ban for life on Mr. Bin Hammam from
involvement in soccer after finding him guilty of attempting to buy votes of
Caribbean soccer officials for his challenge of FIFA boss Sepp Blatter in the
soccer body’s presidential election. Mr. Bin Hammam withdrew his candidacy days
before the election after FIFA had opened its investigation of the bribery
charges.

The CAS ruling left little doubt that the judges believed
that Mr. Bin Hammam, a 63-year old Qatari national, was more likely than not
guilty of the charges brought against him. The court nonetheless acquitted Mr.
Bin Hammam on the grounds that FIFA's evidence did not meet its standard of
"comfortable satisfaction." The court overturned the ban effectively
arguing that FIFA’s case had been based on flimsy evidence, inconclusive
investigations and witnesses whose credibility was in question.

FIFA’s use of the audit to temporarily suspend Mr. Bin
Hammam comes after it unsuccessfully sought to delay the court’s verdict by
introducing the report written by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The court
rejected the report as unrelated to the allegations that Mr. Bin Hammam had
bribed Caribbean soccer officials to secure their votes in his planned
challenge of FIFA president Sepp Blatter in the soccer body’s presidential
election last July.

The report alleges that Mr. Bin Hammam used AFC accounts for
his own benefit as well as that of family, friends and soccer bodies across the
globe. The report also raised questions about Mr. Bin Hammam’s management of a
$1 billion master rights agreement (MRA) with Singapore-based World Sport Group
(WSG) and a $300 million broadcasting rights contract with the Qatar-owned Al
Jazeera television network as well as his financial relationship to parties
with possible vested interests in those deals.

FIFA appears to be betting on the fact that even if it
cannot build a stronger case to reopen its Caribbean bribery case, the fallout
of the Asian report will provide it the grounds to maintain its ousting and
banning of Mr. Bin Hammam.

The report commissioned by AFC prompted the Asian soccer
body to suspend Mr. Bin Hammam for 30 days as its president pending a review of
the report by its evaluation committee. The report provides the Kuala
Lumpur-based AFC with the reasonable suspicion of a legal offence that it under
Malaysian law is obliged to report to authorities. It also leaves the AFC with
little choice but to launch a full-fledged investigation of its own. The AFC, which has Malaysian nationals,
including a member of a royal family on its executive committee, can extend Mr.
Bin Hammam’s suspension only once for a maximum of another 20 days, ten of
which must be used to prepare a case against him. It also has to report its
finding to Malaysian authorities within that period.

The FIFA suspension constitutes an implicit recognition of
the CAS criticism even if soccer body’s statement did not say so
explicitly. FIFA’s investigation of Mr.
Bin Hammam is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. Wracked in recent years by a
series of high-profile corruption scandals and persistent controversy over the
awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, FIFA’s investigation will inevitably
broaden to review not only the Qatari’s involvement in the bid but the bid
itself. That is also probably true for the expected AFC and Malaysian
investigations.

Qatar has consistently downplayed Mr. Bin Hammam’s role in
its bid. Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup at a December 2010 FIFA executive
committee meeting which at the same time awarded Russia the 2018 tournament.

“Pretending that he
was not involved is a smoke screen. Bin Hammam opposed awarding the two World
Cups at the same time. He wanted to be the FIFA president who would award it to
Qatar in 2016. He also feared that Qatar may not get it if the two tournaments
were awarded simultaneously. He was right but lobbied executive committees
unsuccessfully” to delay the vote on the 2022 World Cup, a former FIFA official
said.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore, and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer.

Singapore-based academic James M. Dorsey, whose excellent blog The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer gets regular plugs in this column (do yourself a favour and read it), spells it out plainly in his latest post.

"The Court of Arbitration for Sport's dismissal of bribery charges against ousted FIFA vice-president Mohamed Bin Hammam paints a troubling picture of the status of good governance, accountability and transparency as well as ethical and moral standards in world soccer,"he writes.

"It portrays FIFA's banning of Mr Bin Hammam for life from involvement in professional soccer as having effectively been based on flimsy evidence, inconclusive investigations and witnesses whose credibility is in question."

Or in the words of the CAS report itself: "FIFA's acceptance of ‘absolute discretion' and ‘personal convictions' as an evidentiary standard of proof is contrary to the standards of due process" and didn't go anywhere to meeting the "standard of proof" of "comfortable satisfaction" to be able to arrive at an adverse finding against the currently suspended president of the Asian Football Confederation.

It was "not convinced" Bin Hammam "made monies available to delegates attending the CFU meeting held in Trinidad and Tobago on May 10 and 11, 2011, for the purposes of inducing them to vote for him in the election for the presidency of FIFA".

Which should have been plain enough when this lamentable saga started over a year ago. FIFA's own hopeless Code of Ethics, full of holes and escape hatches, was never going to be enough to collar Bin Hammam.

Section 11.1, the part dealing with bribery, stipulates: "Officials may not accept bribes; in other words, any gifts or other advantages that are offered, promised or sent to them to incite breach of duty or dishonest conduct for the benefit of a third party shall be refused."

How was it ever to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Bin Hammam intended "to incite breach of duty or dishonest conduct for the benefit of a third party"?

The Port of Spain incident that sparked these proceedings might have appeared iffy - and it still does; no one has categorically "cleared"

Bin Hammam and suspicions will remain - but appearances or simple hunches shouldn't have been sufficient to convince FIFA's ethics committee of his guilt and led to the ultimate sanction of a lifetime ban from football. The CAS was not persuaded to find him guilty. A "personal conviction" and a legal conviction are two different things.

Which now raises the question of what is going to be done about the people who banned Bin Hammam in the first place.

In my view, all members of the ethics committee that had a hand in Bin Hammam's ban should be stood down and grilled by new ethics committee chairmen Michael Garcia and Hans-Joachim Eckert before being allowed to take their places in either the committee's new investigatory chamber or adjudicatory chamber.

If they couldn't follow their own code to the letter, why are they being rewarded with new roles?

A careful read of this month's
Court of Arbitration of Sports dismissal of bribery charges against ousted FIFA
vice president Mohammed Bin Hammam paints a troubling picture of the status of
good governance, accountability and transparency as well as ethical and moral
standards in world soccer.

CAS's ruling leaves little doubt
that the judges believe that Mr. Bin Hammam, a 63-year old Qatari national, is
more likely than not guilty of the charges brought against him. The court
nonetheless acquitted Mr. Bin Hammam on the grounds that FIFA's evidence did
not meet its standard of "comfortable satisfaction." The court left
the door open to renewed prosecution of Mr. Bin Hammam if FIFA is able to shore
up its evidence.

If Mr. Bin Hammam would be hard
pressed to portray the ruling as evidence of his innocence, it is in many ways
equally condemning of FIFA. It portrays FIFA’s banning of Mr. Bin Hammam for
life from involvement in professional soccer as having effectively been based
on flimsy evidence, inconclusive investigations and witnesses whose credibility
is in question. It further suggests that rather than strengthening its
evidence, FIFA unsuccessfully sought to delay the court’s decision by
introducing evidence not directly related to its case, including an independent
auditor’s report critical of Mr. Bin Hammam’s financial management of the Asian
Football Confederation (AFC)

The ruling stopped short of
suggesting that the proceedings against Mr. Bin Hammam were rushed to prevent
him from challenging FIFA president Sepp Blatter in the soccer body’s
presidential election last July. The proceedings nonetheless forced Mr. Bin
Hamam to withdraw as Mr. Blatter’s only challenger after he was initially suspended
by FIFA pending investigation of allegations that he had bribed Caribbean
soccer officials to secure their votes.

FIFA’s conduct of the proceedings
raises questions about the integrity of its judicial proceedings in general at
a time that the soccer body is embroiled in the worst web of corruption
scandals in its 108-year history.

Similarly, it further fuels
controversy over the integrity of the controversial awarding to Qatar of the 2022
World Cup hosting rights. CAS’s portrayal of FIFA proceedings coupled with the
AFC auditor’s report make it more likely that newly appointed FIFA prosecutor
Michael J. Garcia will include Mr. Bin Hammam’s involvement in the Qatari bid
in his expected investigations.

That is likely to also be part of
expected Kuala Lumpur-based AFC and Malaysian government investigations of Mr.
Bin Hammam as it relates to possible bribing of Asian football federations.
Qatar has denied that Mr. Bin Hammam was associated with its bid.

Mr. Bin Hammam was initially
suspended on the basis of a report by US lawyer John P. Collins that had been
privately commissioned by FIFA executive committee member Chuck Blazer. The
report concluded that Mr. Bin Hammam had offered Caribbean soccer officials
some $1 million bribes in order to buy the votes of Caribbean Football Union
(CFU) executives needed to win the FIFA election at a CFU gathering in Trinidad
and Tobago convened to offer the Qatari a campaign platform.

The court asserted that FIFA had
failed to establish that monies paid to CFU members came from Mr, Bin Hammam or
that they were intended to buy votes. The court noted that CFU operated secret
accounts and that the report “did not sufficiently investigate the existence of
CFU accounts to check whether the CFU had ever had enough funds to provide the
cash gifts, or whether there had been cash withdrawals from these accounts.”

It rejected a subsequent report by
the Freeh Group owned by former FBI director Louis Freeh as consisting of
little more than circumstantial evidence. The ruling quoted the Freeh report as
saying both “there is compelling evidence…to suggest that the money did
originate with Mr. Bin Hammam” and was distributed by Jack Warner, the former
boss of North and Central American and Caribbean soccer. Mr. Warner resigned
from FIFA to evade investigation as well as in its executive summary that “there
is no direct evidence linking Mr. Bin Hammam to the offer or payment of money
to the attendees of the Trinidad and Tobago meeting.” The court suggested that
there was no reason for FIFA to end its investigation of Mr. Warner given his
key role in the affair.

The ruling further questioned the
credibility of key FIFA witnesses, including Mr. Warner and former CFU general
secretary Angenie Kanhai. It said that the banning of Mr. Bin Hammam without
the testimony of Mr. Warner was based on “extremely limited sources.”

The ruling concluded that “Mr.
Warner appears to be prone to an economy with the truth. He has made numerous
statements as to events that are contradicted by other persons, and his own
actions are marked by manifest and frequent inconsistency.” The ruling was referring
to Mr. Warner both confirming and denying that cash had been distributed at the
CFU gathering despite the court being in possession of a video confirming the
disbursements. “The majority of the Panel (the court) concludes that Mr. Warner
is an unreliable witness, and anything he has said in relation to matters before
the panel is to be treated with caution,” the ruling said.

Similarly, Ms. Kanhai, who handled
a suitcase containing the monies distributed offered contradicting statements.
She initially that she insisted that she was not advised who was the benefactor
who had arranged for the monies., but later changed her statement to say that
Mr. Warner had advised her that Mr. Bin Hammam was the source. The ruling noted
that the change came at a time that Ms. Kanhai was unemployed after having
resigned from CFU and that she was employed by FIFA two days after having
altered a statement.

Mr. Blatter doesn’t fare much
better in the ruling having first declared in advance of the Caribbean meeting
that he was not advised by Mr. Warner about the source only to declare a day
later in writing that the former soccer official had told him that Mr. Bin
Hammam intended to hand out monies.

The court’s rejection of the FIFA
case paints a picture of the world soccer body as well as Mr. Bin Hammam in
which all parties are tainted. In many ways, the ruling raises more questions
than answers. This is bad news for Qatar. Rather than taking Qatar off the
hook, Mr. Bin Hammam’s acquittal appears to increase the need for a full
investigation of its World Cup bid.

To be fair, Qatar could well
emerge from such an enquiry relatively untainted. The enquiry will not only have
to link Mr. Bin Hammam to the Gulf state’s bid but also show that it was aware
of any potential wrongdoing. Moreover, many of the allegations involving Qatar’s
bid strategy involve issues that appear to fall within the boundaries of FIFA’s
bid rules that have sufficient grey areas to raise the question whether the
world soccer body’s failure to tighten those rules in an effort to evade
conflicts of interest is not part of a morally and ethically debateable
culture.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow
at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological
University in Singapore, and the author of the blog, The
Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Qatari and
United Arab Emirates soccer bodies have provided employment for dismissed former
Asian Football Confederation (AFC) senior staff implicated in an independent auditor’s
report that questions the financial management of the group by its suspended
president, Qatari national Mohammed Bin Hammam.

The fact
that the Qatar and UAE soccer bodies agreed to hire personnel that AFC let go
because of their relationship to Mr. Bin Hammam is likely to prompt further
questions about his links to the Qatari royal family and his potential involvement in
Qatar’s controversial winning of the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

Mr. Bin
Hammam is fighting charges of bribery and corruption and potentially
allegations of money laundering, busting of US sanctions and tax evasion as a
result of the auditor’s report as well as his ousting last year as vice
president of world soccer body FIFA. Mr. Bin Hammam is at the center of a
number of soccer corruption scandals that have rocked world soccer and FIFA in
recent years.

Qatar has
long downplayed Mr. Bin Hammam’s involvement in its World Cup bid despite his
past close relationship to the Gulf state’s emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al
Thani, and key role in world soccer.

Mr. Bin
Hammam has appealed against an AFC decision earlier this month to suspend him
as president for 30 days pending review of the report by PriceWaterhouse Cooper
(PWC) that alleges financial mismanagement of AFC accounts to his own benefit
as well as that of family, friends and soccer bodies across the globe.

The report
also raises questions about Mr. Bin Hammam’s management of a $1 billion master
rights agreement (MRA) with Singapore-based World Sport Group (WSG) and a $300
million broadcasting rights contract with the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera television
network as well as his financial relationship to parties with possible vested
interests in those deals.

The report
provides the Kuala Lumpur-based AFC with the reasonable suspicion of a legal
offence that it under Malaysian law is obliged to report to authorities. It
also leaves the AFC with little choice but to launch a full-fledged
investigation of its own. The AFC, which
has Malaysian nationals, including a member of a royal family on its executive
committee, can extend Mr. Bin Hammam’s suspension for a maximum of another 20
days, ten of which must be used to prepare a case against him. It also has to
report its finding to Malaysian authorities within that period.

The report
says former AFC assistant secretary general and director of finance Amelia Gan
managed AFC accounts which Mr. Bin Hammam used “to facilitate personal
transactions as if they were his personal bank accounts.” It also alleges that
Ms. Gan was involved in negotiating AFC’s contract with WSG that is being
questioned. Ms. Gan is currently employed as club licensing officer by Qatar
Stars League, which is headed by a member of the Qatari royal family, Sheikh
Hamad Bin Khalifa Bin Ahmad Al Thani.

Similarly,
the former director of Mr. Bin Hammam’s AFC office, Jenny Be, who like Ms. Gan and AFC’s director of Vision Asia,
Michelle Chai, was let go last year after Mr. Bin Hamman became embroiled in
the FIFA scandal, is also employed by Qatar Star League as club liaison officer. AFC assistant secretary general Carlo Nohra left voluntarily.

Mr. Nohra,
a former WSG vice president for corporate strategy whose $19,767 car loan was
paid by Mr. Bin Hammam according to the PWC report, “played a prominent role in
negotiating the detailed clauses of the MRA,” PWC said. Mr. Nohra was chief
executive officer of the UAE football league until January of this year. He has
since become CEO of UAE soccer club Al Ain FC LLC. Ms. Chai is the UAE
professional league’s director of club licensing and professional affairs.

The league
is managed by the UAE Football Association headed by Yousef al-Serkal, an AFC
executive committee member who is widely seen as close to Mr. Bin Hammam. Mr.
Al-Serkal is campaigning to succeed Mr. Bin Hammam as AFC president. Ms. Chai,
according to AFC sources, has accompanied Mr. Al-Serkal to AFC meetings.

Supporters
of Mr. Bin Hammam who like some former AFC employees credit him for his turning
around of Asian soccer and generosity describe him as a man who embraced new
ideas, enjoyed trying out new concepts and was eager to adopt best practices. “But
there’s also that baggage that is universal in world soccer. He’s just the one
who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar,” said a former AFC employee. He
said he like many others in AFC had been aware of Mr. Bin Hammam’s questionable
financial management. The PWC report came to a similar conclusion.

It is
nonetheless not clear if the allegations in the PWC report prove to be true why
Mr. Bin Hammam used AFC accounts for questionable dealings that could have been
done through accounts that would have been harder to trace. Similarly, it is
not clear why a man of Mr. Bin Hammam’s global stature apparently openly flaunted
international standards of conflict of interest and good governance even if
some of those practices are endemic to post-oil wealth Gulf culture.

The former
employee said Mr. Bin Hammam had promoted personnel to positions they would
have unlikely been able to occupy otherwise. He said Ms. Gan had been a
bookkeeper prior to becoming assistant secretary general and director of
finance. Ms. Be, he said, was a secretary before being elevated to head of Mr.
Bin Hammam’s office and Ms. Chai was a development officer before also being
appointed assistant secretary general.

The
employee said the WSG contract had enabled Mr. Bin Hammam “to live an
extravagant life style” and shower his extravagance on AFC itself. He described
“over the top” AFC functions at which personnel and guests were given jewelry.

He said Mr.
Bin Hammam’s decision in 2008 to invite the heads of member associations of the
Confederation of African Football (CAF) to stop off in Kuala Lumpur for a
shopping spree before continuing on to that year’s FIFA congress in Sydney
instead of travelling to Australia together with other FIFA members had sparked
irritation among Asian football bodies, particularly those of Japan and South
Korea.

The
employee as well as sources close to the AFC investigation of Mr. Bin Hammam
said that the Japanese, South Korean, Jordanian and Kuwaiti soccer associations
have long been unhappy with the WSG contract which they saw as unfavorable to
the Asian confederation. More than half of the revenues derived from the
contract are believed to originate in Japan and South Korea. “Everybody who had
a look at the contract could see that it was completely in favor of WSG,” one
of the sources said. “Japan fought it hard. A number of associations, including
Jordan and Kuwait protested. Nothing however was taken into consideration at
the 2009 AFC congress,” said another source.

Monday, July 23, 2012

An
independent auditor's report into financial management of the Asian Football
Confederation (AFC) by its disgraced Qatari president has set the stage for
major investigations by Malaysian judicial authorities and international soccer
bodies into governance of world soccer and the awarding to Qatar of hosting
rights of the 2022 World Cup, the world's biggest sporting event.

The report
by PriceWaterhouse Cooper (PWC) of disgraced former FIFA vice president
Mohammed Bin Hammam who was last week suspended for 30 days as head of the
Asian Football Confederation (AFC) as a result of the report suggests cases of money
laundering, tax invasion, bribery and busting of US sanctions against Iran and
North Korea.

The report
provides the Kuala Lumpur-based AFC with the reasonable suspicion of a legal
offence that it under Malaysian law is obliged to report to authorities. It
also leaves the AFC with little choice but to launch a full-fledged
investigation of its own. The AFC, which
has Malaysian nationals, including a member of a royal family on its executive
committee, can extend Mr. Bin Hammam’s for a maximum of another 20 days, ten of
which must be used to prepare a case against him.

The report
coincided with a verdict last week by the Switzerland-based Court of
Arbitration of Sport (CAS) that acquitted Mr. Bin Hammam of charges that he had
bought votes for his failed challenge last year of Mr. Blatter in the soccer
body’s presidential election. The court
said FIFA had provided insufficient evidence but went out of its way to state
that its verdict was not a declaration of innocence. Suggesting that it believed that Mr. Hammam
was guilty, the court effectively invited FIFA to retry Mr. Bin Hammam on the
basis of enhanced evidence.

The PWC
report, according to a source involved in AFC’s investigation of Mr. Bin
Hammam, said that it raised questions about the timing of flows of monies in
and out of AFC accounts linked to the charges that Mr. Bin Hammam had sought to
buy votes of Caribbean soccer officials in his failed challenge to FIFA president
Sepp Blatter in the soccer body’s presidential election last year. The charges
formed the basis for Mr. Bin Hammam’s ousting from FIFA and for the CAS case.

“The report
prompts questions about the flows of money from the AFC to other (soccer)
confederations that were perhaps intended to influence matters like presidential
elections or the World Cup. .. A direct link appears to exist between the
inflow of just under $1 million into MBH’s (Mohammed Bin Hammam) sundry account
and the payment in May of $1 million at a Caribbean Football Union meeting.
That link is still a bit unclear,” the source said, adding that it would likely
be subject to further investigation.

Feeding
into imminent multiple investigations that could provide the monkey wrench to
clean up scandal-ridden world soccer is FIFA’s appointment earlier this month of
former US New York state attorney Michael J. Garcia as its anti-corruption prosecutor
to look in to the awarding of the Qatar World Cup as well as multiple corruption
scandals in recent years.

Qatar has
over the past 16 months sought to put a distance between itself and Mr. Bin
Hammam official, denying that he played a role in its bid. Sources close to the
investigations of Mr. Bin Hammam believe that the inquiries could produce a
different picture.

Mr. Bin
Hammam has consistently denied the allegations against him and vowed to keep
fighting them. In a July 18 letter to the AFC executive committee written on
AFC letterhead that was accompanied by a letter from his lawyers appealing his
AFC suspension, Mr. Bin Hammam denounced the PWC report as “mere weak theories
which are badly orchestrated exactly like the Chairman of Disciplinary Committee
verdict…Is not this conspiracy and corruption???”

PWC was
given a limited mandate and resources to do an initial, precursory
investigation of specified accounts and dealings of Mr. Bin Hammam seven months
after the AFC decided on a far-reaching restructuring designed to make the
organization more democratic and transparent as well as rollback changes that
effectively concentrated power in the Qatari’s hands. Allies of Mr. Bin Hammam
in the AFC executive committee some of which according to the PWC report dated
July 13, 2012 were beneficiaries of the Qatari’s dealings are believed to have
delayed the commissioning of the audit.

PWC warns
in the report that “it is our view that there is significant risk that: i. The
AFC may have been used as a vehicle to launder funds and that the funds have
been credited to the former President (Bin Hammam) for an improper purpose
(Money Laundering risk), ii. The AFC may have been used as a vehicle to launder
the receipt and payment of bribes.”

The report cites
a slew of unjustified and at times questionable payments to AFC executive
committee members and their families and Asian and African soccer officials and
associations as well as to Jack Warner, the disgraced head of North and Central
American and Caribbean soccer who resigned last year to escape investigation of
his alleged role in Mr. Bin Hammam’s purported bribery of Caribbean Football
Union executives. Representatives of various federations named as beneficiaries
of Mr. Bin Hammam’s largesse denied knowledge of any payments or insisted the
transactions were legitimate.

The report
further questions a $1 billion master rights agreement (MRA) between the AFC
and World Sport Group negotiated by Mr. Bin Hammam without putting it out to
tender or financial due diligence. The agreement fails, according to PWC, to
give AFC a right to audit WSG’s services or costs. “In comparison with
similar-type agreements for other sports, it appears that the current MRA may
be considerably undervalued,” the report said.

Similarly
broadcast licensing agreements with Qatar-owned Al Jazeera valued at $300
million were not tendered. PWC, noting that the contract was for a relatively
long period of eight years said there was “a risk this significant revenue
stream could be well below market rates in later years.”

The report,
a copy of which was obtained by this reporter, asserts that Mr. Bin Hammam:

n“used the AFC’s
company bank accounts to facilitate personal transactions as if they were his
personal bank accounts” with the knowledge of the soccer body’s finance
committee and under the management of AFC finance director Amelia Gan who was
fired last year after he was suspended;

nreceived in
February 2008 $12 million from Al Baraka Investment and Development Co ,
believed to be owned by Saudi billionaire Sheikh Saleh Kamel. “We understand
that the Al Baraka Group may have been a 20% beneficial owner of the WSG group”
(World Sport Group) with which the AFC signed a $1 billion master rights
agreement (MRA) in June 2009 negotiated by Mr. Bin Hammam;

nreceived $2
million from International Sports Events (ISE) in November 2008, “an entity
which is currently a 10% shareholder of the WSG Group.” The report says that
PWC’s “enquiries indicate that Mr Mohyedin Saleh Kamel, the Assistant Chief
Executive Officer (Investments) of the Dallah Al-Baraka Group may have been
(from 2005 –2009) the Managing Director of ISE;” It said that a significant
portion of these funds were subsequently transferred to Mr Hammam’s personal
and company bank accounts” in Jordan and Malaysia but that “no direct evidence
has been identified to confirm a link between the payments purportedly for the
benefit of Mr Hammam and the awarding of the MRA.”

ntransferred
$4.9 million to Kemco Real Eastate, part of Kemco Group that is allegedly owned
by Mr. Hammam

nmade
“significant and notable payments… in relation to individuals, Member
Associations, and travel and accommodation for AFC and FIFA events” for which
there “does not appear to be any clear purpose for a number of these
transactions. That is, payments were made to entities and individuals with no
corresponding explanation.”

nmade cash
payments to North Korea and Iran that could contradict international sanctions
against those two countries;

npaid “certain fines
and levies charged by the AFC to Member Associations (ie. Jordan, Syrian, Iraqi
and Lebanese Football Associations) that were borne by Mr Hammam. This appears
highly unusual. In these instances payments were not made to the individual
Member Associations. Instead, fines were charged (debited) to the sundry
debtors account as an amount due from Mr Hammam.”

n handed out some
$700,000 to family and friends, including buying suits for himself and
Confederation of African Football head Issa Hayatou who is likely to a target
of the FIFA investigation of the Qatar bid, an aiirline ticket for AFC Vice
President Ganesh Thapa’s wife and son; settling a $19,767 car loan belonging to
former AFC assistant secretary general and WSG vice president for corporate
security Carlo Nohra; purchasing for himself fitness equipment in Kuala Lumpur
and Doha; a $10,000 Bulgari watch; paying $15,000 for unspecified cargo from
Switzerland to Qatar, and shouldering the dentistry, evening gown, facial and
saloon charges of his daughters and honey moon of his son; and transferring
$100,000 to his wife with no justification.

"The
arrangement with Mr Hammam's use of the sundry debtors account is, in our view,
highly unusual and reflects poor governance. This use by Mr Hammam of the
sundry debtors account continued even after the external auditor's recommended
that it be stopped. Our review indicates that it was common belief that this
account was for Mr Hammam personally and all funds flowing through it were his
personal monies,” the report said.

"We
question why Mr Hammam would conduct his personal financial transactions
through the AFC's bank accounts when the documents we have seen indicate that
he already has several personal bank accounts in various countries," the
report said.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Egypt’s
military rulers are employing a security-inspired sustained ban on professional
soccer as a tool to undermine radical, highly-politicized and street battle-hardened
soccer fans who have emerged as the North African country’s most militant
opponents of the armed force’s grip on politics.

The
military’s effort to sideline soccer as a national past time is in stark
contrast to ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s use of the game to enhance his
image and distract public attention from politics. If soccer overshadowed
politics under Mr. Mubarak, politics dwarfs soccer under his successors.

So far the
military supported by the interior ministry appears to be succeeding in its goal
of isolating militant soccer fan groups. It is however a strategy that could
backfire. For one, public focus on politics means closer scrutiny of public
officials and enhanced pressure on both the military and Egypt’s newly elected
president, Muslim Brother Mohammed Morsi, to perform in terms of rebuilding
Egypt’s economy and moving the country further down the road towards democracy.

The
military, the interior ministry, soccer officials and militant soccer fans have
in recent days been locked into a complex dance focused on the authorities’
refusal to lift a five month ban on professional soccer and the aftermath of
the death of 74 fans in February in a politically loaded brawl in the Suez
Canal city of Port Said. It is a dance that in coming days could erupt into
renewed street violence in what the security forces would hope is the final
showdown and militants would seek to turn into a second revolution that forces
the soldiers to return to their barracks.

The
hardening of positions on both sides of the divide comes as Mr. Morsi despite
having won Egypt’s first post-Mubarak presidential election with 52 per cent of
the vote finds himself between a rock and a hard place. Egypt's military, which
succeeded Mr. Mubarak with a mandate to guide the country towards free and fair
elections effectively pre-empted the Brotherhood victory by giving itself broad
legislative and executive authority on the eve of the election. The move has
left Mr. Mors primarily dependent on public support in his tug of war with the
military.

The interior
ministry’s refusal to lift the ban on soccer imposed in the wake of the Port
Said incident as long as enhanced security, including electronic gates,
airport-style scanners and security cameras have not been installed in Egyptian
stadiums is not unreasonable.

Yet, it
ignores the fact that security forces stood aside during the brawl in Port Said
in what was widely believed to be an effort that got out of hand to teach a
lesson to the militant soccer fans for their continued opposition to the
military. It also fails to take account of the fact that the military has
refrained from reforming the interior ministry and its security forces who are
Egypt’s most distrusted institutions because of their role as enforcers of the
repressive Mubarak regime.

The
military’s exploitation of increased post-Mubarak public focus on politics at
the expense of soccer is aided by the poor performance of Egypt’s national team
in recent African tournaments. Egypt last month failed to qualify for the Africa
Cup finals in a crucial match against the Central African Republic just as Mr.
Morsi was being sworn in as his country’s first democratically elected leader.

Media focus
on Mr. Morsi rather than the soccer match was in stark contrast to an incident
in 2006 when the Mubarak regime successfully focused the media on Egyptian
soccer rather than on the sinking of a ferry in which 1,100 people died. Public
sentiment at the time blamed government corruption for their deaths.

“The
balance is being reset,” Egypt Independent quoted American University of Cairo
political scientist Emad Shahin as saying.

In fact,
the role of militant soccer fans in the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak and the
vicious street battles with security forces in which hundreds were killed and
thousands wounded since his downfall that culminated in the Port Said incident
have transformed soccer from a debate about sports to one about politics.

That was
reinforced by the government’s firing of the Mubarak era board of the Egyptian
Football Association (EFA) in the wake of Port Said. Three competing lists –
members of the Mubarak-era board, Islamist players and independent reformers –
are campaigning for the EFA’s elections scheduled for late August.

“This was
the first time in the history of Egyptian football that victims have fallen
after a football match. This match has fanned the flames of conflict between
revolutionaries and the SCAF,” the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces,
said Ayman Abou Ayed, head of state-owned Al Ahram newspaper’s sports department.

Public
empathy for the militant soccer fans was already diminishing by the time Port Said
happened. Many Egyptians have become protest weary and yearn for stability that
would allow their country to return to a path of economic growth. Mr. Ayed argues that the violence coupled
with the suspension of the premier league and the banning of spectators from
international matches reduced public interest in what had been a national
passion.

The
hardening of positions and the potential for renewed violence became evident
earlier this week when a group of militant supporters of crowned Cairo club Al
Ahly SC whose members died in the Port Said incident were attacked by
unidentified men armed with shotguns, glass shards and rocks as they marched
from their club’s headquarters to the Journalists’ Syndicate.

Militant
supporters of Al Ahly arch rival Al Zamalek said days before the attack that they
had suggested ways to reduce violence in the stadiums but had received no
response from the authorities. In a statement, the militants warned that their approach
towards upcoming matches would be determined by how the interior ministry
justified its continued ban on spectators attending games. Zamalek and Al Ahly,
whose derbies prior to Mr. Mubarak’s downfall were ranked among the world’s
most violent, are scheduled to clash on Sunday in Cairo in an African club
championship match.

Sporticos

Ads

Soccer Results

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer does not promote, link to or provide videos from any online sources who distribute illegal streaming content over the Internet with domains registered in the United States of America

Top 100 Soccer Sites

Subscribe To

Subscribe by Email

About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile